A warm spring day in Berlin. Crocuses are in bloom, people are sitting at pavement cafés. Yet something else runs through the conversations: exhaustion. Crisis upon crisis, personal and collective alike. Many people are trying to brace themselves, to become harder. But what if that is precisely the wrong approach?
Research suggests it might be. Vulnerability is not the opposite of strength. Quite the reverse. People who can remain open to being hurt often grow far more than those who shut themselves off.
The Paradox of Strength
Resilience has become the all-purpose remedy of our era. Everyone is supposed to be robust, to absorb setbacks, to keep going. The image of the invulnerable roly-poly figure shaped resilience research for a long time. But that image misleads.
Martin Schneider, Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, has examined this question closely. His argument: vulnerability and resilience are mutually dependent. "Resilience research long held onto the image of a person as a roly-poly toy, practically invulnerable and immune to crises," Schneider explains. "The Christian understanding of resilience shows that resurrection is only possible if one is vulnerable."
What sounds like theological abstraction finds its counterpart in psychological research. Since the 1990s, scientists have been systematically studying what happens to people who live through trauma. And they discovered something surprising.
Growth Through Wounds
Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun at the University of North Carolina coined the term "post-traumatic growth" in the mid-1990s. Their studies showed that people who actively engage with their trauma often emerge stronger from it. Not in spite of their wounds. But through them.
"Post-traumatic growth is the positive psychological change that arises as a result of the struggle with a highly challenging life circumstance."
The concept differs fundamentally from resilience. Resilience describes the ability to return to one's baseline after a setback. Growth goes further. It means genuine transformation: deeper relationships, a renewed sense of purpose, a changed self-image. The researchers developed a 21-item measurement instrument capturing five domains of growth: recognising new possibilities, deepening relationships, sensing inner strength, experiencing spiritual change, and appreciating life more (Tedeschi and Calhoun, University of North Carolina, 1996).
Roughly half to two-thirds of people who experience trauma show such growth processes. Women somewhat more often than men. What matters is not the event itself but how a person responds to it. Those who suppress the experience have little chance of growing. Those who face the pain can mature through it.
The Cost of Invulnerability
Schneider warns against the ideal of invulnerability: "Anyone who builds a protective wall around themselves also closes themselves off to life itself." Modern society often promotes the opposite: optimisation, control, efficiency. Showing weakness is treated as a risk. But this approach carries a price.
Studies on resilience and post-traumatic growth during the Covid pandemic found that those with high resilience experienced less post-traumatic growth. They absorbed the crisis and returned to their starting point. They did not transform. The vulnerable, by contrast, those who allowed themselves to be shaken, often developed new perspectives, deeper connections, and a changed set of values.
"Whoever loves makes themselves vulnerable," says Schneider. "Whoever holds an open basic attitude accepts the possibility of being hurt." Not out of naivety. But from the recognition that real life is impossible without risk.
Honest Stocktaking as the Key
What does it take to grow from crises? Schneider names three resources. First, acknowledgement of reality. No suppression, no sugarcoating. Seeing what is. Second, preserving the capacity to act. Not remaining stuck in the role of victim. Third, hope. Not as blind optimism, but as what Schneider calls "thwarted hope," a hope that holds Good Friday and Easter together, failure and new beginning in the same breath.
Climate activist Luisa Neubauer speaks of "uncomfortable hope." The idea is hope in spite of everything, not hope as denial. This attitude demands courage: courage for vulnerability, for uncertainty, for not knowing.
That courage is often missing at the societal level. "Cultures collapse when people keep living as before despite obvious problems," says Schneider. Research on social systems confirms this. Adaptability determines survival or decline. But adaptation first requires vulnerability: the admission that the path taken so far no longer works.
Grief as a Transformative Force
An unusual proposal: consciously shaping processes of farewell. After a lecture on "grief as transformative crisis management," a regional manager from Wolfsburg spoke up. "We are desperately looking for facilitators who can guide farewell processes," she said. The prosperous years were over, and that was keenly felt in the region shaped by Volkswagen.
Learning to deal with loss is a key competence for individuals and societies alike, Schneider argues. The Christian churches could play a role here, drawing on their centuries-old experience in accompanying grief. "At the heart of the Christian message is metanoia, conversion. As Christians we know: beginning something new always means taking leave of what is outdated."
Daring Vulnerability
The implications of these findings are radical. They mean: letting go of the illusion of control. Accepting that life always involves suffering. Opening oneself to relationships, even though they can bring pain. Viewing crises not as an enemy but as a potential catalyst for growth.
"Suffering must not be idealised. Suffering is something negative. Yet it is an unavoidable part of our lives."
This does not mean seeking out trauma or glorifying suffering. It means staying honest in how we deal with it. Acknowledging the wound. Taking time to process. Seeking community rather than isolating. And above all: feeling no shame for one's vulnerability.
Research on post-traumatic growth reveals clear patterns. Support from others plays a central role. Those who can tell their story, who are truly heard, are more likely to grow. Active engagement with what has been experienced also promotes transformation. Passive suppression, by contrast, prevents it.
Research confirms it; practice bears it out. Opening up risks being hurt. But closing off forfeits the chance of transformation. In a time of multiple crises, that may sound uncomfortable. Perhaps that is precisely why it is the right perspective: not to become harder, but more open. Not to armour up, but to stay permeable. To the pain. And, through it, to the growth that follows.
